Weather and Traffic

New Arctic blast: How cold will it get?

Friday update: The low temperature at Palm Beach International Airport was 39 at 5:30 a.m. The weather station at Palm Beach Day Academy reported 41 degrees. Tomorrow morning’s expected low of 41 could challenge the all-time low for the date at PBIA of 40 degrees.

A freeze watch turned into a freeze warning by the National Weather Service today for inland Palm Beach County. But it looks like actual freezing temperatures will only occur west of U.S. 441.

The low temperature Friday morning is forecast to be 38 degrees at Palm Beach International Airport, so we can expect temperatures in Palm Beach itself to bottom out around 40.

That’s the good news. There’s plenty of bad news, not the least of which is airport delays thanks to the storm pounding the Northeast.

On top of that, low temperatures here will be bogged down in the 40s through Sunday night, and we’ll be lucky to see 70 for a high on Sunday.

All winter, low pressure systems have been spinning up in the Gulf of Mexico and cutting across Florida, then sliding up the East Coast. Two more systems are expected to form over the next five days, according to the NWS.

The first is forecast to barrel over South Florida on Saturday afternoon. Winds should switch out of the west and that may warm us up a notch, but still only to the mid-60s. The low could trigger some showers, but the air mass that arrived last night is so dry that the storm may not be able to wring much out of the atmosphere.

Gulf low No. 2 will form on Monday and sweep over the peninsula on Tuesday. This one may be a little stronger and forecasters say severe weather is a possibility as the storm moves through.

The long-range forecast: More of the same through the first week of the new month. There’s some indication that we may get back to normal temperatures the second week of March. Fingers crossed.

When will winter finally be over? I can confidently predict that it will end on Saturday, March 20 at exactly 1:32 p.m. EDT. That’s when the sun crosses the equator for its (long-awaited) return visit to the northern hemisphere.